Personal Narrative: My Mother's Death

It is a strange feeling not being able to remember what your own mother looks like, what it feels like to be held in her warm embrace, the sound of her voice, or even what she said to you last. Instead a large part of who you are is now missing. On April 15, 2007, my mother passed away of cancer, after fighting for almost a year. Her death had a significant impact on me, but eventually it made me stronger than I used to be. After my mom had passed, I had not been allowed to attend the funeral. I had been only six years old and I did not fully comprehend the situation that my mother had been in. She had been diagnosed in the spring of 2006 with cancer, and at one o’clock in the morning of April 15th, 2007, almost a year later, she passed away with my father by her bedside. My father felt that I was too young to be told that my mother had passed away. Therefore, my father

It was like patching up a cloth that had been ripped. The healing process didn’t occur overnight but gradually over the course of a few years. The piece that I had felt missing from myself, like a gaping hole in my gut, had begun to patch itself up. I began to accept the idea that if it had been my mother’s time to die then there would be no way to change that. My father had also done everything imaginable in his power to keep my mother alive, even if it were for six more months. She fought for as long and hard as she could, and she passed away peacefully with my father by her side. For the past nine years, I had felt like I had been carrying the heavy, aching weight of my grief on my shoulders, but it slowly began to lift away. I started to feel happy, and I learned to appreciate the moments I share with my family, because our lives may end suddenly and without any warning. My mother lived the best life that she could, and the memories she had made with my family would be forever frozen in time in nostalgic pictures in dusty, old